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  Secretary Chertoff Announces New Members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council For Immediate Release Contact: DHS Press Office, 202-282-8010 January 10, 2006 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff announced today the appointment of Elliott Broidy, Tom Foley and John Magaw to serve on his Homeland Security Advisory Council. The Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), as established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, is the Secretary’s primary council and is comprised of experts from state and local governments, first responder communities, academia and the private sector. Members of the Council provide advice and recommendations to Secretary...

June 24, 2002 IMPERIAL TRANSPORTATION BUREAUCRAT SAYS YES TO LAVISH OFFICES, NO TO ARMED PILOTS Undersecretary John Magaw, the chief of the new Transportation Security Administration, has been very busy lately. He just spent $410,000 of your tax dollars installing lavish fixtures in his new office suite at the Transportation department headquarters. The Washington Post reports that "With its plush carpeting, mahogany stained doors, crown molding, and state-of-the-art conference room equipped with $109,000 worth of audio equipment, it has struck some visitors as ‘a little bit over the top.’" Incredibly, Magaw managed to spend about $132 per square foot on...

Hoplophobia Transportation security chief John Magaw appears to be in the human sacrifice business. Despite the fact that our military is authorized to shoot down hijacked airliners, he insists that airline pilots not be armed. Hoplophobia is characterized by inordinate and unreasonable fear of personal arms and items perceived as personal arms (e.g., nail files, tools), as distinguished from the understandable apprehension of dealing with assailants. All this hoplophobic attitude by pencil pushers like Magaw does is provide safe platforms from which air pirates and terrorists can commit crimes. He was quoted as saying that terrorists no longer will sweat...

Recently, I received a message from the Airline Pilots' Security Alliance (1), which is a coalition of the Allied Pilots' Association, the Coalition of Airline Pilots' Associations, the Air Line Pilots' Association, and the Independent Pilots' Association. The message concerned arming commercial airline pilots, but it provided some very good information the national media seems to have overlooked. For instance: “Most people don't know that for many decades after the dawn of commercial aviation, airline pilots carried firearms in the cockpit without incident. However, in late 1987, after a suicidal attacker broke into the cockpit of an airliner, murdered the...